


Loose Ends

by TheSaddleman



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Friendship, Husbands of River Song fix-it, Love, Memory Loss, Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, Spoilers for Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, memory retrieval, spoilers for Doctor Who (2005) Series 10, spoilers for episode s10e11 World Enough and Time, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 15:37:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11316402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSaddleman/pseuds/TheSaddleman
Summary: When the neuroblock that erased most memories of Clara Oswald wears off minutes after saying goodbye to Clara at the Diner, the Doctor immediately tries to find the woman he loves. Only Clara Oswald - brilliant Clara, the one human who has come close to being a Doctor in her own right - has indeed thought of everything.





	Loose Ends

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set after Hell Bent and was written after the broadcast of World Enough and Time and before the airing of the Series 10 finale, The Doctor Falls. It was written as a response to the lack of references to Clara in Series 10 and the possibility that Clara might not appear for the final Twelfth Doctor story. If she doesn't appear, it will leave a major loose end. So I got to thinking ... what if her storyline had been resolved well before Series 10? To say any more would be a spoiler.

The Doctor had tried to put her out of his mind after the encounter at the diner. When Clara Oswald had sat inches from his face and he, like an idiot, could not recognize her. Because of the damn neuroblock he’d activated on himself in her TARDIS (and how strange that sounded in his head, yet oh-so-right), the Doctor had nearly all of his memories wiped of the woman who had been by his side for so many years.

But it hadn’t been perfect. He’d chosen a human-compatible model, to use on Clara. By rights, of course, it shouldn’t have worked on the Doctor at all but, well, that’s a discussion for another day. Suffice it to say it hadn’t worked to specifications. The Doctor had forgotten many things about Clara—how she talked, how she laughed, the colour of her eyes and, perhaps most importantly, how he felt about her. He knew she was a friend, just as Donna (poor Donna…) had been a friend. Tegan. Nyssa. Polly. Harry. Just one of many. They came, they left. Sometimes they died. 

Sand through an hourglass.

Yet he also knew Clara was more than that. Despite the neuroblock, he knew she had been there the day he was going to destroy Gallifrey and the Daleks. She’d talked him out of it when the most powerful sentient weapon in all of creation had failed to do so. He knew it was Clara who had visited him in the night when he was a young boy crying in that awful barn, her warm hand caressing his hair as she inspired him to be brave. He thought she was a dream then. 

To some extent, she still was a dream.

So many memories that existed in his mind. Including the day Clara died. Thankfully, he had forgotten the sound of her scream, too. But he remembered the sight of her slim form arching and falling to the cobbles of Trap Street, smoke rising from her body. A vague memory of cradling her; a useless attempt at reviving her. Kissing her forehead.

And then utter coldness as he made an immortal fear for her very existence. 

And he remembered the darkness that followed. An eternity alone. Except for Clara. Always Clara. She was seared into his mind so deeply over billions of years, it was no wonder the neuroblock could never totally erase her. 

After the darkness, came the light. A bright light in a Gallifreyan extraction chamber. And a gambit to save Clara that he somehow both won and lost at the same time. The price he paid had been his detailed memories of this brave young human.

But then Clara—brilliant, kind Clara—had finally made a mistake. She’d tried to contact him later. In the Nevada desert, of all places. 

The Doctor replayed the conversation he’d had with the woman who tried to pretend she was just a minimum-wage diner waitress imported from England. How he’d found himself telling her about his memories of his final hours with Clara. Hours he still remembered. Except for her face. He’d forgotten her face. And her voice. And how he felt about her. He knew it was tied to whatever it was she had told him in the Cloisters as they plotted to escape the Citadel. He had a suspicion, but he dare not voice it. He needed to hear it from her. Only her.

Seeing his TARDIS returned to him had filled him with joy and puzzlement. But then Clara was brilliant—of course she’d figured out a way to get her TARDIS to carry another one inside without causing a time ram. 

But the door of his TARDIS was different from when he’d left it four and a half billion years earlier. Someone had defaced it with flowers. He guessed it was probably Rigsy, the human who had made a little human of his own—and for whom he knew Clara died. This had been Rigsy’s way of expressing grief, so the Doctor had quickly forgiven him for covering the side of his TARDIS with ugly flowers. 

Well, OK, they weren’t that ugly, he had reasoned. OK, they were quite pretty, to be honest.

And then, amongst the designs, there was the portrait of Clara. Smiling, eyes dancing. And looking exactly like the woman who was in the diner that had just vanished with the telltale groan of a TARDIS with its parking brake left on.

And that’s when everything began to come back.

Inside the TARDIS, Clara had left him a replacement for the velvet coat he’d lost on Gallifrey, and she couldn’t resist leaving her mark on one of his blackboards: “Run, you clever boy, and be a Doctor.”

And more pieces of the puzzle dropped into place. That voice. He heard that voice again in his memory, saying those words. Many times. No, the damn neuroblock couldn’t erase them all! So many voices, so many Claras. Yes! The echoes. He might have forgotten one Clara—but then there were three. Fifty. He even remembered ones that had never occurred to him as being Clara. The Doctor finally realized in that moment that blessed Queen Victoria herself had been one of Clara’s echoes. Of course, she’d banish the Doctor afterwards _and_ set up Torchwood, too. The Doctor smiled and laughed as he began to shoulder on his new coat.

Royalty: a job fit for a control freak beyond measure.

With his returning memories, he recalled in finer detail why he pushed the button in the first place (oh, he knew all along that Clara had successfully reversed the neuroblock’s polarity. She wasn’t just an amazing teacher: she was also an amazing student. She'd have burned the Academy down to the root cellar if she'd been given a chance). He knew he couldn’t chase after her. She had a TARDIS, probably a companion (he guessed it would be the immortal Ashildr and prayed to whatever deity was no longer pissed off at him that she would stick to the straight and narrow and be a good companion to Clara). Sure, Clara was technically dead, but she till had the universe to explore. She had a right to a life, even if he wasn’t part of it anymore.

So he’d tried to distract himself. The TARDIS helped, tossing him a brand-new shiny thing—a new sonic screwdriver, of course. And with bravado he’d strode across the console room and pulled the dematerialization lever and set off for adventures anew. 

He was the Doctor. He was back. Watch out universe, here I come.

Five minutes later, he was at the console, scanning for any sign of a second TARDIS moving through the time vortex.

Because, one minute before that, one more memory had returned to him. It was the memory of what she’d said to him in the Cloisters.

And then he remembered that he was in love with Clara Oswald.

***

“Don’t do it, Doctor.”

The voice startled him. He thought he was alone in the TARDIS. And the voice sounded like … 

“Clara?”

It was a holographic recording, projected from the console, life-size, onto the floor in front of the Doctor, who stepped back from the console to take it in more clearly. 

By the looks of things, it had been recorded soon after he and Clara had pushed the button on the gothic-looking neuroblock device together. Clara hadn’t gotten the framing quite right; he recognized the clean white of the old-school Type 40 they’d stolen from Gallifrey—and also a little bit of booted Time Lord foot could be seen on the floor behind her where it had been picked up by the camera. 

This was him, of course, having been knocked unconscious by the neuroblock (a common side-effect of memory erasure, whether chemical like the reboot drug developed by Torchwood, or tech like the neuroblock invented by the Time Lords or the memory wipe device UNIT used to protect its Black Archive, was temporary unconsciousness). Clara looked so tiny in her grey top and dark pants—the outfit she’d worn when she’d died on Trap Street—her medium-length hair somewhat disheveled and her face smudged with a mixture of dust from the Cloisters and tears.

Oh, yes, that’s right. He’d asked her to smile for him one last time. She’d cried instead.

“Doctor, if you’re watching this, it means the TARDIS—your TARDIS—has picked up on you trying to locate me. I hope it means you’re remembering me. I don’t know if that’s possible. But, Doctor, you can’t do this. Don’t come after me. We pressed that button for a reason.” She looked down at the floor. “It should have been me. I didn’t want any of this to happen.”

“No, it was right,” the Doctor said to the thin air. I was the bastard who nearly blew up the universe because I’d fallen for a human. No more, he thought, before inwardly shaking himself and amending that thought to “never again.” Let’s not invoke that part of my life again.

Holo-Clara continued. “If you remember me, then I hope you remember what I said to you in the Cloisters. I meant every word. I always will.” She smiled and the Doctor found himself instinctively reaching out to touch her face. Was it coincidence that Clara shifted her head ever so slightly, as if feeling his fingers across time? The Doctor refused to allow his analytical mind to ruin the moment.

“But you were right,” Clara said. “This has to stop. If we’re together … I don’t know if this hybrid stuff is garbage or what. Maybe it’s just a fairy tale like you said. But we can’t take the chance. Too many people are at risk. So please, Doctor, if you love me in any way … if you love me …” Clara stopped as she turned and looked away from the camera. The Doctor knew she was looking down at his unconscious form. She looked back at the camera. “Don’t come looking for me.” She reached down at what was probably the console and the “stop” button and the image faded.

Instantly, another hologram began. Now, Clara was in the same short, blue waitress uniform she’d worn as a disguise when he’d encountered her in the diner. The background was different now: it was his own TARDIS. Oddly, the first thing the Doctor noticed that Clara was wearing a pair of trainers that used to belong to him back when he wore a piece of celery in his lapel; they were an auto-sizing model he had picked up on a shopping expedition to 2043.

“Hello again,” Clara said. “All the stuff I said earlier still applies—don’t come looking for me. But you haven’t gotten the memo yet, obviously. You’ve been making inquiries with UNIT and Torchwood. So I got in touch with Kate and told her to tell you there was a solid lead on finding your TARDIS in Nevada. The TARDIS sensors show you’re about five miles from here. Sorry for the long road trip. I wanted to do this in London, but Ashildr said there was too much risk of people seeing me and, yeah … guess that part of my life is over now.” Clara looked pensive for a moment. What was she remembering? Or who, the Doctor thought, sadly. “So we chose Nevada. I wanted to land a little closer to Vegas—we had great times in Vegas—but I missed. Sorry. And we had to take your TARDIS from London because I needed to … de-Clara it a bit before giving it back. Sorry again. Though I hope you liked the coat.”

The Doctor smiled. Of course. He’d have done the same thing. He ran his fingers over one of the sleeves, imagining Clara doing the same before leaving it for him to find. For a moment he wondered if Clara had put her arm through one of the sleeves and held it against herself, pretending to be wrapped in a hug, like Bérénice Bejo did with Jean Dujardin's jacket in _The Artist_.

Breaking out of his momentary fantasy, the Doctor could just about make out a figure—incredibly, even smaller than Clara—passing behind her in the recording. “Ashildr says hello,” Clara said with a giggle.

“No, I don’t,” he heard the immortal one-time Viking say in a clipped accent that sounded as imperious as you'd expect coming from someone who had lived for more than 100 trillion years. “You’re being stupid, Clara.”

Clara seemed to forget the camera was on. “You keep saying that but you don’t have a stake in this, Ashildr.”

“Me!” the other woman corrected from off-camera.

“Whatever the hell your name is. I just want to make sure he’s all right.”

“No, you’re going to try to break the neuroblock.”

“No, I’m going to test it,” Clara shot back. “Make sure it still works.”

“And what if it doesn’t?”

Clara ignored this. “Doctor, please, remember what I said. Don’t come after me. If your memories have returned … just know I’ll always care for you. And I remember what you told me. I’ll never stop running. I’ll never be cruel nor cowardly unless absolutely necessary. I’ll make it up to people if I ever am. And I never liked pears, anyway.”

Clara tried to laugh but changed her mind. Instead, she turned to Ashildr. “Me, do I really have to do this?”

“You know you do, Clara.”

Clara looked forward again and her large eyes somehow locked with that of the Doctor. (Surely an illusion, the Doctor’s analytical mind thought.)

“You said, back on Gallifrey, how you’d told the Time Lords running the confession dial that you’d never stop looking for them. You then spent four and a half billion years playing a long con to save me. So I know nothing I can say will make you stop trying to find me now.” The Doctor found himself nodding.

Clara fiddled with her apron tie. “In about five minutes, you’ll walk through the door of my TARDIS—which we’ve brilliantly disguised as an American diner, by the way. You’ll love it. I even had a life-sized Elvis portrait put on the door leading to the loos. But here’s the hard part. I’m going to try and pretend I don’t know you. Will you know me? I don’t care what Ashildr says. I hope you do. What will we do if you remember?”

Clara looked nervously over towards Ashildr.

“Let’s see what plays out,” she continued. “I’ve been watching you in the TARDIS since you arrived at the UNIT airstrip. So very you to hitchhike rather than borrow a Jeep. And you’re bringing a new guitar, too! Maybe you’ll play me a song. Last one for the road.

“But I don’t think you’ll remember me. I’m fooling myself. And I know the universe demands that you don’t remember, so I’m sorry, Doctor. If you’re watching this now, then I’m so, so sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” the Doctor said.

“Doctor. I love you. And regardless what happens next, that is something I will never forget, not until the day I return to Trap Street to face the raven.”

“Never go back there, Clara,” the Doctor said as his mind was processing what Clara had just said. She had actually said it, even though he knew it meant she had broken a promise made to Danny long before.

“I have to go back to Trap Street. Someday. Everyone you or I have ever loved will cease to exist if I don’t. So our…your TARDIS has been pre-programmed to carry out two actions once I give a signal. Don’t try to undo it, you won’t have time. And you can’t stop this playback, either.”

The Doctor started looking around the console room wildly. But for what? He pressed the stop button, already knowing it would not work. His only option was to throw the TARDIS into siege mode, but then he'd be unable to hear the rest of Clara’s message.

“Don’t tell him any more,” the Doctor heard Ashildr say. “And the other him is almost here.”

“Get back to our TARDIS and be quiet,” Clara hissed back. “Doctor, I know you never took River to Darillum. I know that you have tried to do for her what you did for me on Gallifrey. Stop time from happening. And it was just as damn stupid then. But still, so you, right? Ashildr and I did some digging around and we located her on a planet called Mandorax Dellora. Sounds like something you’d need to get cured for at a clinic. Find her, Doctor. Make it right.”

The Doctor’s jaw dropped as his mind cast back to those centuries spent on Trenzalore, the years he spent assuming his bow tie-wearing, fez-loving self was the final Doctor. He went up on that rooftop to die under Dalek fire. If not for Clara, brilliant Clara, convincing the Time Lords to give him a new regeneration cycle, it would have been game over. For Clara, Amy, Rose, Missy, Sarah Jane. Everyone. They would have all simply ceased to exist.

Stupid, stupid Doctor. How could he have forgotten? He’d pushed it to the back of his mind, the thought of sending River to her own death. It had been filed away, stored alongside the memories of what he’d done during the Time War, when he’d so offended himself, he’d renounced his very name and effectively banished one of his entire lives.

The memory of his obligation to River and her timeline was filed away and literally forgotten. My god, if it hadn’t been for Clara … and there was no neuroblock to blame for it this time. This one was all on him.

Despite this bombshell, the Doctor found himself uttering to the holo-projection: “I don’t want to lose you again. To forget you.”

“You _have_ to forget me, Doctor.” How was she doing that? the Doctor thought. Were we—are we—that alike that she can read minds, too? “You will find River, and soon. I promise. We made arrangements for some guy named Noddy or Nuddle or something like that to get your attention. It’ll be Christmastime when you arrive. That’s always been our favourite time of year, eh?”

“But, how…”

Clara smiled sadly. “I wish we could win this one, Doctor. Me and you. And, hey, maybe we will in a few minutes. You come through the doors, sit at my counter, play your song and remember me. And then … maybe we’ll watch this some day for a laugh over chips and beer. Nah, who am I kidding? Still, maybe we’ll meet again, eh? I hope so. Just know … I’ll be OK.” Her eyes took on an air of finality.

The Doctor suddenly knew what was coming. My brilliant Clara. Of course you would. He looked up and saw, at a forty-five degree angle above his head, out of what would be normal line of sight (or maybe it had just materialized there), something that looked like a black, plastic rose nestled in the rotors, which had stopped rotating. Too high to reach. Undoubtedly, unlike its twin in UNIT’s Black Archive, shielded from his sonic, the TARDIS likely programmed to make it vanish after doing its job. No loose ends.

Clara was blinking back tears. This time it was her hand that reached out. The Doctor moved in closer, even though the real Clara could not know her virtual hand was caressing his cheek like she used to. After a few moments, she withdrew her hand. “You better go sit down. I don’t want you to hurt yourself when you pass out.”

“Yes, boss,” the Doctor said as he dropped into a chair. And then he wanted to speak again. He had to say it. Words he never said before, because he was always afraid. Afraid that his godforsaken Rule No. 1—the Doctor lies—might someday apply to those words. He didn’t care that the only entity actually capable of hearing them at that moment was a sentient timeship who probably thought the whole thing was stupid anyway.

“Clara, I lo-”

“Apple-six!” came the sudden command from Clara’s hologram and the field of the Doctor’s vision was filled with a blinding flash. He never felt his chin slump forward toward his chest.

***

The sound of the TARDIS materializing woke the Doctor with a start. 

Dozing off again? I must be getting old. And dreaming, yet. Though, like most dreams, this latest one was already erasing itself. All he could grasp onto was a bright flash of light and, almost like a fatigue image, a pair of beautiful round eyes. Even that was fading.

And then the carols started. The TARDIS thought it was being funny, piping in the sound from outside. It was one of the annoying ones, too.

“Oh no, not another Christmas,” the Doctor moaned. “Dickie had it right: bah humbug!”

He went to the console and typed in a command. On the door outside, a sign reading “ _Carol singers will be criticised_ ” appeared. (The Doctor had been tempted to use the word “exterminated,” but had decided that was going a little too far.)

He had just noticed that something was attached to his head when he heard a knocking on the door.

“What now?” he muttered. He really had no reason to be grumpy. It was just that he felt like he’d forgotten something important, and had homework to do related to it. And it was frustrating. Well, whoever was hammering away, he thought, maybe they’ll be useful for something. Like target practice.

He flung the door open and addressed a stout bald-headed man with a humorous face standing in the falling snow, a piece of paper in his hand.

“Is there anything on my head?” the Doctor asked without preamble.

“Er, well, yes,” the man stammered.

The Doctor asked him to describe it, hoping it wasn’t a fez. He had gone off fezzes ever since he had stopped travelling with ... somebody. He shrugged off the slight blank in his memory; it would come back to him eventually.

“You’ve sort of got antlers,” the man said.

“ _Antlers?_ ”

Nardole blinked at the Doctor and wondered what the hell he’d gotten himself into this time, cursing both his employer, River Song, and the young human woman in the impractical costume who’d pointed him in this direction.

Just down the street, Clara peeked around the corner and watched the two carry on. She knew she probably cut a strange figure, wearing a short blue waitress uniform in a dark corner of a street that looked like it had escaped from a BBC costume drama in the dead of winter. Nardole certainly had found her outfit odd. But she didn’t care. It’s not as if she felt the cold anymore. 

She watched the Doctor ditch his foam antlers (that had been her idea; to give the Doctor another distraction, she’d had the TARDIS materialize a pair on his head) and follow Nardole down the street to where she knew River Song would soon meet him again and a new chapter would begin.

Ashildr stood at her elbow. “Jealous?” she said.

“Of who? River? We’ve been through all of that, Me. Time Lords look at such things differently. They … compartmentalize. They don’t do jealousy. It’s not that difficult, really.” Clara looked at Ashildr. Did she accept the lie, she wondered. Even as she counted in her head how many times the Doctor acted like a green-eyed monster (Danny, Robin Hood, Jane, the list went on), it appeared to her that Ashildr had bought it. Or chose to ignore it. Probably the latter.

“I can’t believe that simpleton is going to be the Doctor’s next companion,” Ashildr said as she watched the two men retreat into the distance. “He’s no Jack Harkness.”

Clara smiled. “He’ll be fine after he gets some upgrades. When the Doctor finally says goodbye to River twenty-four years from now, he’ll need somebody, especially when he meets up with Missy again, and River will have the foresight to place him in Nardole’s care. Which reminds me, we need to contact Missy and convince her not to mention my name the next time she meets the Doctor.”

“And how are we going to do that?” Ashildr asked.

“I’ll ask her. She’ll owe me a favour once I rescue her from the Daleks. And then after he reunites with Missy, the Doctor will meet up with Bill Potts and life will, for a while, go on.”

Ashildr noticed the shadow that passed over Clara’s face at the mention of this second future companion. “What aren’t you telling me, Clara?”

Clara shook the thought away. It was her fault for looking too far ahead. She’d stopped when she’d learned about Bill, the Cybermen and not one but two Masters causing havoc. She had a sense it wasn’t going to end well for the Doctor. And she didn’t really want to know. The Doctor would live on, of course, and take on a few body. But she wanted the grey-haired stick insect to live on in her memory forever.

“Story for another time. So, Me, have you ever seen a planet completely made of shrubs?”

“Shrubs?”

“Yeah, shrubs,” Clara said as she and Ashildr walked through the snow towards an incongruous-looking American diner. “Lovely spot called Thedion Four. Great place for a picnic.”

**Author's Note:**

> I greatly dislike the 2015 Christmas special "The Husbands of River Song". Not because of anything related to Whouffaldi, but because it created a huge continuity issue with the events of The Time of the Doctor. This story is in part an attempt at a fix-it.
> 
> To continue my intro notes, I thought: what if the Doctor reunited with Clara before the events of The Husbands of River Song? That by the time he got back together with River and later moved on to the events of Series 10, her story had already been resolved in some fashion? I'll let you judge the success of my idea.
> 
> As I said earlier I wrote this before the broadcast of the Series 10 finale. My bit about Clara not wanting to find out what happens to Bill reflects the trepidation a lot of fans have leading into the finale.
> 
> Most of my canon references are straightforward. A few that might be worth citing: 
> 
> Queen Victoria aided the Doctor in Tooth and Claw (during which she founded Torchwood); since Jenna Coleman plays a younger Victoria, there's not much of a stretch to suggest Victoria is a Clara echo. 
> 
> Mandorax Dellora is the planet The Husbands of River Song is set on. 
> 
> The planet of shrubs, Thedion Four, is where Twelve takes Clara at the end of Mummy on the Orient Express.


End file.
